


Faith

by Haely_Potter



Series: Bending the Universe [6]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Episode: s06e11 The God Complex, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-26
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2017-12-27 16:27:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haely_Potter/pseuds/Haely_Potter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy asks why he destroyed her faith in him rather than his own faith. The answer isn't what she expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faith

**Author's Note:**

> The quotes are from Rose, World War Three, Dalek, Doctor Dances, The Parting of the Ways, The Christmas Invasion, New Earth, The Idiot's Lantern, The Impossible Planet, Doomsday and Journey's End.

"It didn't want just me, so you must believe in some god or someone, or they'd have shown you the door too. So what do Time Lords pray to?" Amy asked the question the Doctor knew had been coming since he'd destroyed her faith in him.

He evaded it for now but he knew the conversation wasn't over yet, Amy was much too curious for that. And just like he thought, soon as they'd left Gibbs among civilization, Amy was back, bothering him with questions he didn't want to answer.

"Why me? Why not you? I mean, you could've just as easily disillusioned yourself of your faith as you did me," she pointed out.

"But I can't, Amy," the Doctor finally snapped. "When you've lived nine hundred years and seen things and done things, you need that faith, more than anything. You need that thing that makes you feel… humane, less broken, less guilty. Until Time War I believed in cold logic and hard facts and, I suppose, Time Lords as a whole. After, for a while, I didn't believe in anything. In fact, I'd just given up when-" He stopped and turned back to the controls. "Well, it doesn't matter."

"When what?" pestered Amy. "What happened? What made you believe again?"

The question fills his head with images of a blond girl, wise beyond her years and meager human understanding, compassionate to everyone (even him, him who had killed his own kind and countless others, even a Dalek who had nothing but hate in its core), brave beyond belief.

_"I've got no A-levels. No job. No future. But I'll tell you what I've got. Jericho street Junior school's under sevens gymnastic team. I've got the bronze."_

_"Do it." "You don't even know what it is. You'd just let me?" "Yeah."_

_"It couldn't kill Van Statten, it couldn't kill me. It's changing. What about you, Doctor? What the hell are you changing into?"_

_"The World doesn't end if the Doctor dances."_

_"It's like I haven't seen you in years." "Told ya I'd come and get ya." "Never doubted you."_

_"Doctor!" "So I'm still the Doctor then?" "No complaints from me!"_

_"I'll never get used to this. Never! Different ground beneath our feet. Different sky. What's that smell?" "Apple grass." "Apple grass!" "Yeah!" "It's beautiful. Oh I love this! Can I just say? Traveling with you. I love it."_

_"Tommy, go after him." "What for?" "He's your dad." "He's an idiot." "'Course he is. Like I said, he's your dad. You're clever. Clever enough to save the world, so don't stop there. Go on!"_

_"Everyone leaves home in the end." "Not to end up stuck here." "Yeah, but stuck with you… that's not so bad." "Yeah?" "Yes."_

_"I've made my choice a long time ago and I'm never gonna leave you."_

_"I-I love you."_

_"Basically we'd been building this, umm, this travel machine, the, umm, dimension cannon so that I could… so I could… well, so I could…" "Could what?" "So I can come back."_

The memories of her, of his faith, overwhelmed him, not for the first time since he'd left her. Though often they were a small but constant stream, a tickle in the back of his mind, a stray thought.  _Rose would have loved this_  or  _I wonder what Rose would have thought of Lord So-and-So_  or  _What would Rose say if she saw you now?_  The last one was never particularly happy, because often he was doing something she wouldn't have approved of (like that one time he'd pointed a gun at her, trying to get rid of a Dalek). But he needed it. It kept him from straying too far into the darkness inside him. Kept him from becoming the Valeyard.

"Someone I met," he answered Amy softly, eyes distant. "She was young, just nineteen. Life had dealt her a harsh hand. Not the harshest, but harsh non-the-less. She had nothing. She hadn't finished school. I'd just blown up her job so she was out of job. She still lived with her mum. But she saved me when she could have run away. The moment she swung on a metal chain to knock the anti-plastic to the Nestene Consciousness was the moment I thought life might be worth living for, if only to meet people as alive her. You know… she said no when I first asked her to travel with me, said she had to look after her mum and Mickey the Idiot, he boyfriend at the time. A few weeks later, for me, I went back, and asked her again. I'd forgotten to mention the TARDIS travels in time too. I don't ask twice, not after being turned down. I come back if I have to prove I can travel in time or I have to hop to the Moon before I manage to ask properly or… if the person needs convincing, I will prove I want them to travel with me asking a second time, but I don't ask a second time after being refused. Donna… well, I didn't ask her the second time, she took it for granted," he laughed slightly. "But Rose… that's her name, by the way, her I asked twice and I haven't regretted it since. She is… she is… impossible to put to words, that's what she is. She's just… Rose. All pink and yellow and impossible. She survived things even I couldn't. She realized things faster than I did. She knew I wasn't a perfect hero from the first time we met. How could I, she had to save me the first time we met. The first place I took her to was the end of Earth. I made her watch as her planet was destroyed. In the end, I don't know when, exactly, we fell in love.

"Now understand that Time Lords don't fall in love, it isn't instinctual to us like it is to most other species in the Universe. Before the Time War the Matrix prevented that but even after it was destroyed, or had never existed, as it may be, it still wasn't likely for me to fall in love. It had been bred out of us Time Lords thousands of years ago. But I did and she did. We never talked about it, never did anything about it. She was human and I was a Time Lord. She'd die long before me and I didn't want that, didn't want to watch the love of my lives wither away and die before my eyes. I thought it'd hurt less when I'd eventually lose her. It didn't. I managed to say goodbye to her, burning up a sun in the process. She confessed her love. And I was going to answer her but I ran out of time. A few years went by. I had a few other companions with me. Martha and Donna. Probably drove Martha mad, comparing her to Rose all the time. She fancied me, see. Anyway, big problem, Earth stolen, Daleks, reality bomb. And Rose came back. That was the second time she did the impossible and third time she returned to me after I thought I'd seen the last of her. Unfortunately a human clone of me was formed, someone with my mind and memories and feelings. Someone who loves her just as much as I do. So I left her with him so that they could have the one adventure I can't. A real house, mortgage, children. Jobs. Marriage.

"She is my faith Amy, a human girl. How do you destroy faith in that? I know she had had a bad relationship, very bad, I might add. She's done stupid things. She's caused a paradox that erased me from time for a moment. She'd also done some amazing things. I know her flaws so anything that might have caused me to lose faith, I already know and accept, anything else is a lie. I know she isn't infallible. I know she will grow old and die in that alternate universe, or at least I think she will, but this is Rose Tyler we're talking about. She's done the impossible before, I wouldn't put it past her to do it again." He turned back to the console, ignoring the tears streaming down his cheeks and his squeezing hearts and burning lungs and clogged throat. "How do you lose faith in something that has already let you down without you losing faith in them? How do you lose faith in the one thing that makes life worth living for?"

"Doctor," he heard Amy whisper hoarsely. "I didn't know."

From the reflection on the glossy monitor screen the Doctor sees Amy hug herself and feels guilty for dumping this on her. "No one but I knew," he answered, back still turned to her. "Well, the Devil did, but not with so many words, before he got sucked into a black hole." He wiped his eyes. "And I'd prefer to keep it that way, okay? Don't write it down anywhere and don't tell anyone. I don't want the Silence the get more ammunition in their arsenal."

"Of course," murmured Amy before turning and walking up the stairs, probably in search for her husband, leaving the Doctor alone with his thoughts of days long gone, of a different mad man in a blue box, of Rose Tyler in the Tardis with the Doctor, just as it should be.


End file.
